Ezequiel arrived on the coast of Suriname on a small boat outfitted by the Universal Organization of Magicians, to attend the Central Academy. Until he was 30, his current age, Ezequiel had oscillated between different approaches to knowledge, work and relationships, without ever finding a direction, a meaning, a synchrony between his drives and circumstances. Neither a bilateral love, nor a convocation work, nor a personal success.
He had finally allowed his memory to win the game: the memory of that magic session on Heloise’s eleventh birthday. The magician Najón, a sixty-year-old, flabby-cheeked, badly shaven, with a general hooded aura and a tilted galley, was anticipated by the appearance of the dove.
They discovered the rabbit’s escape and found the duplicate card. He tried to split a human shape made of balsa wood in half: they booed him. To distract himself, Najón revived a withered plant in the pot on the coffee table. But the children’s audience did not celebrate this prosaic phenomenon. The silence was not respectful.
Only 15 minutes of a 40-minute routine had passed and the guests just wanted him gone. The magician’s left arm stiffened, he turned pale, he put his right hand to his heart and fell to the floor on the parquet. Heloísa’s father called the ambulance, while her mother cried.
Eloisa, already dismayed by the failure of the show, hugged Ezequiel without thinking. Just a few seconds, of fear and confusion.
When the doctors confirmed the magician’s death, Ezequiel composed a reflection that accompanied him on his solitary return along Tucumán street, to his house on the corner of Uriburu, in the heart of the Once neighborhood: the magician’s successful trick had been his unforeseen end. Reflecting on this paradoxical triumph, Ezequiel could feel sorry for the deceased. Heloísa’s touch had left a mark on a part of him he couldn’t place.
It was already the holidays. Ezequiel’s school was changed and he never met Heloísa again.
He remained between these two events – the death of the magician and the absence of Heloise – until the age of 19, not knowing exactly what to do. But he studied magic from a distancewith the postal coupons of a comics magazine in horizontal format, more by discard than by conviction.
After a decade of effective work as a professional magician at parties, he applied to graduate from the Order. There he landed. A rickshaw was waiting for him at the dock.
Ezequiel was greatly surprised by the transportation, typical of Asia in past centuries. The attackers, a man and a woman, appeared to be arguing as they charged at him. Ezequiel didn’t know if their faces were already dark or tanned from the sun. Would they be Hindus?
During the 40-minute journey along dirt roads, in the midst of what Ezequiel considered the culmination of an incomprehensible disagreement, the woman told him to get up from his chair – Ezequiel obeyed without knowing why – he took her place. her passenger and between the two men transported her to the Academy building. As the woman descended, Ezequiel thought he found something familiar in her face, or in her gestures, or in her voice.
He was received by the magician Fechor, dean and jurist of the Brotherhood. He asked him why he wanted to become a magician.
“19 years ago,” Ezequiel said. During an act of magic at Heloísa’s house, for her eleventh birthday. When the wizard Najon died, Heloise clung to my right arm. I couldn’t forget her or find her again. Not even that episode: I call it a deadly trick.
Ezequiel allowed himself a silence after the recapitulation and concluded:
-I decided I had to become a wizard to get Heloise back.
The wizard Fechor held his chin.
“The motivation is right – he finally said – the direction is precise”. But you’re missing the details. It’s logical: no one can know everything.
Ezequiel looked at him puzzled.
The rickshaw drivers stood on either side of Ezekiel and the wizard Fechor.
“I’m Luis,” the man said.
“I’m Marta,” the woman said.
They were Eloisa’s parents, tanned by the Surinamese sun.
Heloise herself, of otherworldly beauty, introduced herself. She took Ezequiel’s right arm.
“I know you never forgot me,” Heloise whispered. Nor me for you. But we are not right for each other. That time it went well.
Ezequiel knew, from the bottom of his soul, that if that certainty was all he had to take away from the end of that bizarre journey, it had been worth it. Eloisa was right. She felt him in her arm and in her heart. He might be unfortunate, but he might also be appropriate.
“So…” Ezequiel pressed his departure.
At that precise moment the magician Najón entered. Sixty years like Heloísa’s eleventh birthday; but with a firm face, an alert expression and an impeccable galley.
“To become a Magician,” he told Ezequiel, placing a loving hand on his right shoulder, “the first lesson is when he finishes a trick.”
Source: Clarin
